My information sources for developing an ISO 14001 manual include:
• A copy of the Standard itself (which arrived by email a couple of days ago)
• My Arthur-shredded or approved Compact 9001 Manual
• The Acorn Course Book which cost me £50
• A Handout provided written by NQA, the UKAS approved system auditors, but actually given to me by Adrian.
I begin by creating a complete stand alone ISO 14001 manual – even though I know there is going to be duplication between ISO 9001 and ISO 14001. This way might seem more long-winded but I need to learn each standard one at time before I merge them. Otherwise it gets too confusing and complicated.
Sovereign Certification provides a useful but wordy version of an ISO 14001 manual. For Data Eliminate’s version, I exclude from the first section of my ISO 14001 manual all Sovereign’s wording which is similar or equivalent to what Arthur deleted from my ISO 9001 manual.
I still find it hard to make sense of the “Interaction of Processes” – but I think its probably because is so simple I can’t understand it - if you know what I mean. The examples of Interaction of Processes charts I have are more concerned with the process of implementing the environmental standard (Plan, Do, Check, Act I suppose) rather than featuring specific Data Eliminate customer service processes.
I work out a number of things in order to keep the ISO 14001 documentation to a minimum. The first is that the six standard procedures required by ISO 14001 (Corrective Action, Preventative Action etc) are almost identical to those required for ISO 9001. In addition, you need a Training Needs Assessment Form to track training you believe your employees need to fill skill gaps. To complement this, you need a Training Record Form to record the details of the actual training.
When compared to the Quality Policy, the Environmental Policy is different in focus but much the same in style. As was the case with ISO 9001, thanks to Supply London I had a morning’s lesson in how to write a policy. However, one could have used someone else’s and created one in a few minutes by making some very minor changes.
The we get onto the bits which are not part of ISO 9001 but which ISO 14001 requires. These include:
• An Environmental Aspects Register
• An Environmental Aspects Analysis
• A Register of Applicable Laws and Regulations
• A Risk Assessment Methodology
I also add some questions to the Supplier Questionnaire which is already part of my ISO 9001 manual and some items to the Management review Agenda. The Environmental policy has to be on our web site with contact details for the manager responsible. We also need documented environmental objectives.
The first version of my Environmental Management System manual is 25 pages long – a lot more compact than my 53 page long ISO 9001 Quality Manual first starter effort.
I then spend an hour or so removing the items from my ISO 14001 manual that are duplicated in my Arthur approved ISO 9001 manual. After that the Environmental Manual is down to about 14 pages.
Things are coming together nicely. ISO 9001 and ISO 1400 are integrated. I will now need to merge ISO 27001 with them.
I contact Arthur to arrange another session. This time I am going to get him to review my combined manual for ISO 9001 and ISO 14001. I hope that I have pre-weeded it this time so that he doesn’t need to tear it apart or tell me I like detail. If he does that again after all this effort it will take more than one flapjack in my mouth to keep me quiet!
Based on notes from my diary from June 2008.